Worker-Owned Cooperative Businesses Project

Worker-Owned Cooperatives Project

Fuerza Laboral is the lead organization in the POWER Network (People Owning Wider Economic Resources), a coalition of public, private, and non-profit partners that incubates worker-owned and -managed cooperatives.

The POWER Network is comprised of Fuerza Laboral; Navigant Credit Union, providing financial counsel and services; URI's Rhode Island Small Business Development Clinic, providing legal consultation; the City of Central Falls, providing infrastructural support; and the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, an experienced incubator for worker co-ops.

We envision eradicating poverty in our community by building the power of workers themselves to control their economic destiny through a Cooperative Business Incubator program. We seek to create an economic model led by impacted members of our community that respects the dignity of all workers, draws on workers' own strengths and skills, and puts people above profits. A network of cooperative businesses founded with these values will provide living-wage, quality jobs to those who are most vulnerable to income inequality, thus changing the economic power dynamic that had previously kept them poor.